


Thirst for knowledge

by SkekLa



Series: A thousand years have passed [3]
Category: The Dark Crystal (1982)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dubious Morality, For Science!, Gen, Moral Ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 19:43:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21214043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkekLa/pseuds/SkekLa
Summary: A small story where skekLa´s dubious, ambiguous sense of moral kind of shows up while she acts as a recorder to one of  skekTek´s several disections.





	Thirst for knowledge

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly a character development snippet ;)  
Written back at 2017 ^^  
I hope it´s an enjoyable enough one!

The creature squealed when the scalpel came down.  
Just one ear-splitting screech of defeat and pain...and then there was silence.

Bile rose to SkekLa’s throat , as she turned away and gagged, a twisted and pale taloned hand pressed firmly against her beak to refrain vomit.

The Scientist bent his scrawny neck tilting his head to one side, and cackled a small sinister laughter between his teeth.

-“NEVER getting used to it, are you?...Hehehehe...well...you should take my example! Just see it as pieces of knowledge which need some cohersion to be unfolded! ...Or even as delicacies,like the Gourmand does!”-

The Illustrator eyed the head of the brown and greenish small thing which hung loose from a side of SkekTek’s disection table. It had been a feral Keeki, until the Scientist took care of silencing it. Now it was a gory mess.Wide opened maw trickling with dark blood, flopping long ears, and bulging eyes.  
-“A delicacy indeed! Pff! ...“- she retorted bitterly, as another wave of nausea ran through her. -“...After spending a worthy while in HIS KITCHEN. Here and now, I’d rather not touch that THING even with a stick.”-

The Scientist laughed again.  
-“Not even for Knowledge, eh?...I know you tend to get unusually disgusted by the sight of some creatures and lessers’ deaths, Illustrator...but I know you feel the same fascination as I do, for guessing how each of the inner structures work. How they ensemble and connect with each other, how what we see outside relates to what lies beneath the skin!...Don’t you wish to APREHEND it?...I know you want to know how this thing works!...”-

SkekLa gave out a blunt snort of dissaproval, although her eyes were indeed afire with interest.  
-“Obviously. Yet, the whole process of it sickens me. Who are you to criticize whatever way I feel? YOU can go and happily indulge in your love of pawing through guts and blood, as far as I concern, I don´t see why I should. That is YOUR work...”-

Her rant stopped dead all once when the Scientist, without even minding her words, began to cut the creature open.  
-“Enough small-talk, you ninny. Do your work. Today, I WILL find out how the bristling peduncles on this things’ back work. Who knows? This may be of use later.”-

Holding back a new rush of bile -albeit minor than the previous ones- SkekLa pulled out a small coal strip and a blank piece of scroll from her black vest’s jumbled pockets.

At least the thing was not squealing anymore.  
She hated it when they squealed.  
As much as it seemed to amuse the Scientist, she had never been able to avoid feeling a pang of guilt over the pain she sometimes imagined the creatures were being put through.  
SkekTek had told her enough times that the animals didn’t have enough intelligence to actually acknowledge pain, hence, even though they reacted to it, the whole screaming and thrashing was- in his opinion - nothing but a mechanical, self-preserving response to aggression.  
The Illustrator would often just try to ignore the screeches and convince herself that the Scientist was right about that.  
Otherwise, how would she ever be able to do her work?  
It was crucial that she’d take note every structure, every sinew, every little thing inside of the test subjects which were disected by SkekTek.  
If she did not keep account of the research, the information would soon become murky and vague within the Scientist’s memory - despite him being as meticulous as possible.  
It had to be done.

Truth be told, SkekTek was right. She DID want to know, as much as he did.  
Moreso if a possible cure for any of the diseases and ailments which were lately tormenting all of the court could be waiting for them within the glands, teeth, fur, or whatever part or fluid of some of the experimental subjects.

It was all a ridiculous contradiction- skekLa pondered, as she started to trace out an accurate-as-possible drawing of the half dismembered keeki laying on the disection table- She hated pain... and yet would rather gladly indulge into causing pain to other creatures for the sake of discovering how to stop her own suffering.  
As had been happening to all the skeksis, old age loomed upon SkekLa and crept into her bones. Anything done to stop such torment would be acceptable now.  
These days, life itself had become a mixture of anger and pain for the skeksis. It was hard for every single one of them to feel any other thing anymore when one would grow increasingly aware of being imprisoned within a body which was slowly decaying, and death lurked closer with every passing day.  
The skeksis had a faint memory of what it had felt to be immortal...the idea of dying was an abhorrent, inconceivable thing for them.  
Besides the fear of imminent death, there was the degeneration they were suffering...  
Formerly musical voices now rasped, colors dulled out, sight dwindled and hearing diminished...yet that was not the worse thing.  
The pain was.  
The horrible, loathsome- and now so disgustingly familiar- pain...it was present every time when SkekLa bent to retrieve anything from her drawers or shelves, when she walked,when she moved her arms in a careless manner, or even if she turned her head to a side with a sudden motion...pain had become all-present to her.  
And it was just the same for every other skeksis.

A hissing murmur echoed through the walls of the Laboratory.  
The Illustrator inwardly scolded herself for having been lost in though. She needed to focus.  
What was the Scientist doing?

SkekTek had plunged one of his fingers between the skin and the muscles of the creature’s back, and now seemed to dig in there, muttering something unintelligible.

The Illustrator began to feel increasingly more curious than disgusted, and slowly stretched her thin neck to peer at the Scientist´s actions.

-“Pff. I can’t understand how these peduncles and fur rise when the animal is afraid. There should be something to help them straighten! It might be a response which only happens if the creature’s alive, but I thought it would be triggered by some physical structure...I was so certain- !... I can’t find—“-  
All of a sudden, the dead keeki seemed to bounce on the disection table, and SkekLa gasped, taking a hasty step back.  
-“Agh! Is it still alive?!...”-

The Scientist hearthily laughed at her evident disgust.  
-“No, you fool! Of course it’s not! ...I found what I was looking for! Look!”-  
With a small push, SkekTek rolled the creature’s body onto it’s side, and then caved one of his taloned fingers under it’s skin again through the frontal scalpel-made incission, producing a sickening wet noise.  
SkekLa was debating between feeling repulsion or being amazed.

At a slight movement from the Scientist’s hand, the keeki’s back bristled with green reedy tufts of thick fur, which jutted upwards in all directions, making the entire dorsal side of the animal look much like a patch of tall- grass.  
The Illustrator gazed at the trick in awe, her beak gaping open with excitement.  
The effect dissapeared immediately when SkekTek redrew his finger from the creature’s insides.

-“HOW did you do that?”- Asked SkekLa, completely fascinated and now beyond all sense of disgust or guilt.

-“It is simpler than I believed: beneath the skin there are tiny ligaments. They feel like filaments... I will open it more to see, now. I think they attach to the lateral apophysis, and remain in relax until needed. Seems like if If I pull the creature’s spine upwards, the strand-like ligaments are tensed by the vertebral contraction and get all that fur and reedy structures to stand up! I assume the thing works equally whe then creature curls up or crisps in tension! It was so simple...”-

SkekTek was delighted with his discovery, his only visible eye shining with a fevered, mad passion, as bright as the lens he had fitted in the other one.

-“I can use this to create a cloak with a similar maneuverability...it would bristle with plant-like structures and decoys, for camouflage...The Hunter would find a good use for something like that!...or... there could be made an ornamental carapace which would bristle with fins, tusks and spines at the pull of a cord, to look more imposing and intimidating!...”-  
The scientist was clapping with enthusiasm and talking alone in his joy, while the Illustrator had dared to close in to spy the said inner workings of the animal.  
Taking a metal tweezer from a rusty instrumental plate, she clipped and moved aside the dead creature’s skin layers in order to expose the newly discovered ligaments, and copy them for a new drawing.  
As soon as she did it, SkekTek rushed to her side, his long, crooked face turned into a mask of rage.  
His beak snapped at her with a warning clack, and before she could react he had shoved her away from the disection table.

-“DON’T touch it! It’s MY find ! You might ruin the specimen, the structures are DELICATE!”- He growled, as the Illustrator hissed back, baring her fangs at him.

-“You twisted old FOOL! How do you suppose I shall take note and draw the find if you keep me away from it? I need to SEE or the record will be unaccurate!”-

After some seconds of low growling and intense measuring stares, both skeksis slowly regained composture.

-“You may SEE, but don’t put your clumsy talons on it! Here. Do your work now.”-  
The Scientist groaned, as he pulled the tweezer back, revealing more of the complex internal structures of the creature.

SkekLa did not reply to this other than with a silent muttered curse.  
Her hands flew over the scroll, and soon enough a new anatomical drawn study was completed, in extreme detail.

“No more bile between my teeth now”- she pondered in the back of her mind as she started out yet another drawing, this time, showing what she could see of the creature’s skeleton and muscles.  
“Perhaps I will feel nothing nasty at all when I visit the Laboratory next time...and perhaps, that next time, the find might be a remedy to put a stopper to pain...!”

In spite of herself, and even knowing she had told herself the same things over a hundred times before, the Illustrator crooked up a minuscule smile, and finished another picture.

**Author's Note:**

> Please keep in mind that these fanfictions are meant to take place in an Alternate Universe where certain things might differ from canon. Albeit, this is heavily based off the classic Dark Crystal movie (1982) and some of the canon and characterisations might sound off to anyone who´s not watched the movie (given how certain things were retconned and/or changed by the recent Netflix series)  
All the canon lore and recogniseable characterisations for canon characters within this fic are based off the classic movie and its associated 80´s book lore and/or Legends of the Dark Crystal (2007). *Also referencing Brian Froud´s Creation Myths (2011)concerning the fate of two skeksis right after the splitting*  
The rest of what´s seen at my fanworks is just personal headcanon.  
****Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, all Dark Crystal canon characters and events etc. are the property of their respective owners (Brian Froud, Jim Henson and everyone who worked in the making of the Dark Crystal). The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author (SkekLa) is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.****


End file.
